March 4, 2021 —– Chart #133
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Today we venture to 1972 and a familiar song with two co-writers, one from the Isle of Gibraltar. “It Never Rains in Southern California” is a song jointly written and composed by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood and sung by Hammond, a British-born singer-songwriter. The lyrics of “It Never Rains In Southern California” tell a first-person story of a showbiz aspirant whose attempts to break into entertainment were failures, but who wants to hide that fact from those he had left behind to pursue his dreams.
Though Hammond’s and Hazlewood’s lyrics do not actually specify the narrator’s living conditions, it can be implied that he was found homeless and penniless, a humiliation he would naturally be unwilling to reveal to those he had left behind.
Albert Louis Hammond OBE (born 18 May 1944) is a British-Gibraltarian singer, songwriter, and record producer. A prolific songwriter, he also collaborated with other songwriters such as Mike Hazlewood, John Bettis, Diane Warren, Holly Knight and Carole Bayer Sager. Hammond’s son Albert Hammond Jr. is a guitarist with American band the Strokes.
Hammond wrote commercially successful singles for artists including Celine Dion, Joe Dolan, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Diana Ross, Leo Sayer, Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Julio Iglesias, Willie Nelson, Lynn Anderson and Bonnie Tyler, and bands Ace of Base, Air Supply, Blue Mink, Chicago, Heart, Living in a Box, the Carpenters, the Hollies, the Pipkins, Starship, and Westlife. Notable songs co-written by Hammond include “Make Me an Island” and “You’re Such a Good Looking Woman” by Joe Dolan, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship, “One Moment in Time” sung by Whitney Houston, “The Air That I Breathe”, a hit for the Hollies, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”, a Julio Iglesias/Willie Nelson duet, and “When I Need You” by Leo Sayer. In 2015, he received the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection.
And here he is in 2017: https://youtu.be/T3IQU8VwFQk
Keep Rockin’ my Friends,
Stan